I seem to have touched a nerve with this Rant of mine as I have had loads of comments on the blog and off blog. Most of the comments I have received have agreed with me, but the ones on FB and twitter are not totally in synch with my thoughts and that is fine.
A couple of tweets took issue with me saying I was fed up with Inspirational Women and we all needed role models to look up to and I could not agree more. I have made it clear that this is a personal view and slightly tongue in cheek (though I meant every word), and yes, young girls and women need to know they can aspire to great things - if they want to. And I feel that so many of these articles can make you feel a bit despairing "Oh I can never do anything like that" and make you feel a bit useless. So I think there is a balance to be sought.
When writing I made the point that women do so much and all unsung. In their way they are inspirational, they do wonderful things but nobody gets to know about it. And all the time in the back of my mind was the rememberance of something that I had read and loved and expressed my thoughts. Woke up this morning and remembered it. So I took the book down from the shelves and here is what it said:
"But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea we know.
Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive; for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs"
The last page of Middlemarch by George Eliot.
Perfect.
